The Fantabulous Team Fortress Adventure
by awilla the hun
Summary: The advantures of a new, intrepid band of players, and their epic adventures of massive heroism! In fact, I should miss out "adventures." And "epic," "massive" and "heroism." But that wouldn't be a good summary, would it?
1. Chapter 1

There was once a team in Team Fortress 2. It consisted of the best and brightest players. It was formidably armed and equipped, full of master tacticians and clever people. Their aim was true. Each habitually downed at least twenty before falling, and could rocket jump like the soldiers in the trailer. They were, in short, the bee's knees. The best. The elite. The cream of the crop. The business. Six of the hardiest, bravest, boldest, nerdiest people ever to walk the Earth.

This story does not concern them. It talks about this bunch instead…

"Good morning, gentlemen," the spy said, materialising right behind an engineer. The line of advancing heavies turned and levelled mini guns at him.

Mindless, obese, sweating vermin. Replaced their brains for guns. Gnnh. Morons. The world is being corrupted by such people. Possible homosexuals. Deserves looking in to he thought.

"Me want to give him Sacha," one of them grunted. A long line of engines revved up.

"You see," the spy went on, "I have broken this man's finger." He did. The engineer howled in pain and keeled over, but the spy kept a firm hold. "I have broken his middle finger now," the spy continued. There was a sharp crack, and the engineer was writhing.

"Please god, pwn this bastard," he moaned, earning another broken finger.

"I shall continue to break fingers," the spy said, "until you hand over the intelligence." The heavies scratched their heads.

"But we can't pick up da shootcase, mistuh-" they grunted

"Rawfish," the spy said. "Gnnh. Where is the intelligence?"

"In the base, mistuh fish," the heavies said. "You know it's there." They dumbly stepped forwards. "We're real angry with you now."

Rawfish was congratulating himself on skilfully drawing the heavies into his sinper's line of fire, and was just composing an appropriately objectivist quip, when a total lack of rifle shots cracked. He shrugged, adjusted his suit, and went for his magnum. There was a dull rattle of minigun fire, an agonised scream, and then silence.

Then there was a call. The email beeped. "Go onto MSN to join my clan," it said. Rawfish obeyed.

Rawfish arrived in the server, to find a conversation in full swing. A guy called Cecil was discussing Kant with a certain Bubba, who didn't appear to be that interested. Another man was pressing the "jolt" button and lolling with glee when he was sworn at by the others. 

"Good morning," Rawfish said. "I'm here for the clan. Gnnh."

"You're in," said Capapias. "Shall we have a game now?"

"HELL YEAH!" came a huge voice. "LET'S KICK SOME ASS!" This was from a fellow called Doctor S. T. Octagonist.

And with that cry, the newly formed Magnificent not Quite Seven set forth.

The final player turned out to be a sniper by the name of Hermann von Cluckenmeister. He stood up and shyly waved as the team entered the 2Fort headquarters. "Hallo," he said. "Does anyone want any tea?"

This was far from what I had expected from a sniper. An engineer is used to thinking of snipers as psychotic loonies, who enjoy nothing more than roasting small children over the fires caused by fragile, steel, hastily built structures exploding. I could tell that this was a man of decency and honour. In another life, he would have been a flower presser, or perhaps a diplomat. I liked him very much, as I toiled away, walloping my turret with a wrench. It's odd. I hit the turret with a wrench, and it sprouts new guns. But when the enemy scout discharges two barrels of buckshot into its metal derriere, it seems to explode in short order.

But anyway, the sniper was very nice. He had my taste in South African bush hats, and provided tea and cakes for me as I tried to figure out where I could give the soldiers the most of my twin fifties. But he was most certainly not sniper material. I expected someone like the Jackal, or the new James Bond. But he was far more appropriate than the Heavy.

Cecil was found in earnest discussion with an audience of enemy scouts, about the inner meanings of The Lord of the Flies.

"Well, listen here," he said, waving a huge hand earnestly. "In my mind, the beast represents the- ouch! Be off me, you brute, do!" This was to a Scout placing twelve nine mm rounds into his huge chest. "Anyway, the beast is the inner darkness of the human race in all of our souls." I stopped playing to write that down in my GCSE notebook, before giving the scouts the benefit of my shotgun. "Stop that! You're hurting the poor boys!" he called out, as I cackled insanely by pressing the taunt button, before pulling out my revolver and capping another fast moving target. "Well, you deserved everything you got, you beast," he went on, as a scout went for me with a baseball bat. I shotgun butted the adolescent into submission, before kicking him in the face for good measure. My god, but I hate scouts.

I was just feeling satisfied with myself, when there was a crack, and I zoomed in on the sardonic face of the sniper who'd just potted me. I came to understand that Cluckenmeister had drawn a bead on him, but stopped to wave amiably. My god, but I hate snipers.

This brings me on to the medic.

"I'll give you cover fire, SUH!" Doctor Octagonist roared, slamming to attention. He had been sharpening his bone saw on a tooth, and was looking extremely vicious. "The red's won't know what hit 'em! And if it wasn't for our boys in Omaha, you goose stepping bastards would have all the whole god damn planet now! So give me some respect!" This was an instinctive conversation topic, which he turned to whenever our faithful sniper entered the room. He had apparently killed everything from "the Kaiser to the Commies", so he was well qualified to fight. The only problem was that he had chosen the worst possible class to use. He would sit around camp fires, and tell us for hours how he had killed twelve or thirteen dozen Sturmwaffen with a broken bayonet, or had gravity gunned his way through an angry mob of elite combine troops. But when the firing started, this all changed.

His favourite tactic was to try and set up a punji pit with his syringes. When this failed, he would yell at the top of his voice, and run at the enemy attacking force. He would be riddled with bullets, and then dropped dead in about two seconds. I am given to understand that he and Cecil used the same internet café, and their connections swapped.

Anyway, I decided to take him along, as long as Cecil came too. Laying a teleporter was hard enough, but at the good Doctor appeared to be the only man who could make Cecil fire a shot.

We set off at ten o clock in the evening, the three of us. Oh, and the scout. Bubba ran around randomly, pulling faces, cartwheeling, and generally making the enemy snipers waste dozens of bullets trying to get a chest shot. "You can't shoot like that, boy!" he called up. "Ya dang fool! Who d'ya think ya are? You cain shoot fa shit!"

Then, true to form, a sniper performed a great service to humanity by getting the capering little man in the face.

Somewhat cheered, I raced into the left entrance, and put the pad down. I stood up and turned to my two henchmen. "Do you know what to do?" I asked politely.

"Hell yeah, Capapias, sir!" the good doctor said, slamming to attention. "Stand here, and kill any commie bastards who come your way!"

"Yes. I think I will keep out of sight, and occasionally see if the doctor is all right," Cecil said, reaching for a first aid kit.

I rolled my eyes heavenwards. "Yes, that is correct in principle, but the other way around. Doctor, you stand out of sight, and heal Cecil." I said it slowly, and clearly. Both stood speechless.

"I didn't fight through Omaha and 'nam just to get told to stand back, boy! Classes don't mean squat, when the commies and Nazis are shooting atcha, and- STOP MINCING ABOUT, YOU DAMNED QUEER!" This last statement was to Cecil. "GET IN THAT GOD DAMNED CORRIDOR, AND KILL EVERY RED BASTARD WHO COMES THROUGH!"

Cecil was about to say that violence was beneath him, but Doctor Octagonist breathed in again, so he reluctantly stood in the corridor, gun ready.

"I'll see what's happening," I said. At least I was about to, but then a volley of bullets slashed past my face. The counter attack had come.

Doctor Octagonist roared with fury, and charged down the corridor, blasting away with his syringes. The shocked enemies- a brace of scouts, and a heavy- stepped back for a moment, and then he vanished into the gun smoke. I would love to say that he was never seen again, but his white coated corpse crashed back about two seconds later. Cecil was down, looking at his broken fingernails from a stray scattergun blast.

My god, but I hate heavies.

I levelled my shotgun and fired. The scout had just dived across the corridor, aiming his pistol, and was snatched back. I fired again, and again. I staggered as the first shotgun blast hit home, but caught my assailant in the chest. I began to reload, saw the heavy coming, and drew my pistol instead.

I fired. My god, but I fired. I put round after round into the huge figure blocking the corridor, into the chest, and head. Anywhere. The gun kicked back once, twice, a third time, until it clicked empty. I had hardly scratched the heavy. I think this was because of the weird blue light flowing into him. If the NHS was half as good as the blue light, we'd be free of plague for ever.

I looked around as the huge gun swung down. I could hear a huge, prolonged scream from upstairs. That was Rawfish. So that left me facing a tower of Slavic muscle and broken teeth.

Which smiled, as the gun was about to fire.

Then the world seemed to explode from under me.

A demoman sauntered in, reloading his grenade launcher. A voice came through SKYPE a moment later. "That was such a noobish thing to so. Ohmygosh! You're, like, so not l33t!" It was a female, American voice.

Dreamygirl had arrived on the team.

What has Rawfish done? Will Cecil ever fire a shot in anger? How did Dreamygirl arrive on the scene? Find out in the next instalment!


	2. Chapter 2

Ok, well that last one was interesting. No on really read it. So I'll now continue, with more Watchmen referencing, guns blazing, witticism making mayhem!

The sniper looked through his scope. He'd potted that scout well enough, so it was time to do even more damage.

Except that the scope had a note pinned on it. "Look behind you" it read.

The sniper turned around sharply. There was no one there. Smiling, he turned back to his rifle, only to find that it wasn't there.

"I told you," a voice said, "to look behind you. Gnnh. Stupid snipers. Think this is a point and click adventure game. Everything is shit."

The voice belonged to a spy. "Christ mate," the sniper said, laughing and reaching for his machine gun, you scared me!" The machine gun, it turned out, wasn't there.

The spy watched contemptuously as he reached for the machete, with similar results.

The sniper swore morosely. "Why can't I just punch him?" he shouted impotently at the game engine.

"You're not a Heavy," a great omnipotent voice replied.

Both men shrugged. "So, now you're going to be in great pain," the spy said. "In immensely great pain."

The sniper's last words were something along the lines of "why the hell can he tamper with the game engine when I can't? It's just not fair!"

"You're a sniper," the omnipotent voice said, "and he's a spy. You're both ridiculously overpowered anyway. Muhahaha!"

The sniper was found inside an engineer dispenser, with a note attached to his forehead via a spy knife. It read "repeated healing means lots of pain without death. Gnnh."

All goodwill between myself and Dreamygirl ended the moment she first talked down SKYPE. Whilst it was good that she had saved our collective arses, and that it was admittedly hilarious hearing her "black Scottish Cyclops" talking in an East Coast American accent, the novelty wore off after about three minutes.

The fact was that she considered herself to be an extremely, if I may use the term (and I do so with a certain precision born of long experience), l33t gamer. This meant that she took great delight in pointing out all our flaws, which, I hasten to add, there were many of, and dropping in helpful advice in the middle of a firefight.

"OMG!" she cried as I spun back, desperately snapping shells into my shotgun, "why are you even fighting? U r teh engi, u should be with teh sgs!" A pistol round whipped past my face.

"Well, why don't you join in?" I asked, before desperately reversing my shotgun and whacking it into a soldier's kneecap. Dreamygirl was, as per usual, firing grenades wildly over a wall a good distance from the fighting. She tried to answer, but then I heard a roar of anger, the rattle of a syringe gun, and three seconds later Doctor Octagonist's smoking corpse fell back riddled with holes.

Everything was going as normal on TF2.

"Hey," I said at our morning tea break. "So, everyone, what do you think went wrong?"

"Wrong?" Doctor Octaganist asked in a confused sort of way. "Wrong? Well, we beat the crap out of the commies, dang it! Especially you!" he gave von Cluckenmeister an accusing look.

I rolled my eyes. "People, we managed to lose seventeen nil. That gives me the feeling that something distinctly bad happened. So, everyone, how do you think you could have improved?"

"Easy!" Dreamygirl said. I could imagine her rolling her eyes. "Ur are v.newby! Plz play CS, or something."

If one listened carefully, you could hear the knuckles cracking from the other side of the Atlantic ocean.

"Well," Cecil said after a long, imposing silence, "I believe that I occasionally fired my weapon." He shuffled his feet, took a long sip of his tea, and continued with this most grievous confession. "It was because, well, those scouts were beginning to irritate me."

"Oh yes?" I asked.

"Indeed so. They all gathered round me in a great big circle, held their arms out and started a most hellish chanting. 'Play ball!' they all said! They even called me knucklehead! It takes a lot to make a Cecil angry, you understand, but even I am given to occasional bouts of rage. So…" he sighed to himself. "I may have injured a couple of them. I do hope that they recover soon."

"Right. Well, my advice is that you get angry more often. And well done for going first, by the way. That was very brave of you," said I. "So, anyone else?"

"Well," said Doctor Octagonist, "I must confess, such, that I was not continually heavily engagaged in blowing the living shit out of the hun from dawn til dusk. I ran outa syringes, ya see," he explained limply. "So I had to get some more. Oh, and I died about eighteen times." His jaw clenched. "I will get that sniper if it's the last thing I do, suh!"

"You are such a noob!" Dreamygirl said again. "Combat medics are, like, soo not haxxor!"

"Speaking English is, like, soo haxxor," I muttered under my breath, but then it was von Cluckenmeister's turn.

"Well," he said in a matter of fact sort of way. "Ah, yes. Right. Well, I did fire my rifle a bit, so I'm not entirely a villain. But- it's just- well, it's all cruelty, isn't it?"

I shook my head. "I'm afraid that you have to hit targets on occasion," I said gently.

"Yes, but- well, that scout couldn't have been out of adolescence, could he? And that poor pyro, doomed to wearing a mask forever- it just breaks my heart to think about it. All those poor souls…" He gave a folorn, thousand mile stare into the distance. "But I got a couple of shots off, all the same," he added.

"Very good, very good. And Rawfish?"

"Gnnh."

"My thoughts exactly." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at not having to read his journal.

Bubba lept up and explained how he had spent the match running around and firing every weapon he could lay his hands on, without, or so the scores said, actually hitting anything at all.

This just left me.

"Well," I said, puffing up self importantly, "I employed the principles of the great Cypher." Everyone gave me a blank look. "The combat engineer," I said.

"Ah," said Cluckenmeister, "so that would be why you ran forward, toolbox in hands, demanding covering fire."

"Well, yes of course."

"Whilst that spy simply camped our intel."

"Well, I took a few with me, didn't I?" I protested defensively.

"You lost us the match, dumbass," Bubba said, reaching for his bat.

"But engis aren't supposed to camp the intel all the time! So said the great Cypher in his posts on the teamfortress2fort forums!" This was a genuine internet site, which I held in high esteem.

"And another thing," I said after the shouting died down. I expertly masticated a sponge finger, before carrying on, "we really do need a pyro."

Everyone nodded soberly at this.

"It's that… patch idear," Octagonist said, a whistful look in his eyes. "All those cooker bastards with their shiny new goddamned guns from their goddamned new achievements. Slimy, masked, voiceless bastids!" His eyes turned suddenly hollow, as he remembered some old war or other. His restless gaze swept the room. "And they blew all our explosives away! Every danged round blasted off! Or else getting more damned armour from their weapons, or a flare gun, or…"

"Well," I said, "it's high time for us to recruit one. We did get a little bit roasted this morning, after all. And they had four pyros. Four! All jamming on their axes over my beautiful, steel babies!" I began to cry at this. Cluckenmeister gave me a hesitant pat on the shoulder.

"Gaiiiiiiiii! Lolololololololololololololololol!" Dreamygirl said.

"Shut the f up, bitch!" Octagonist cried. "In the trenches, we did little else." There was a sudden silence as everyone turned to look at him. "What? What?"

Rawfish scribbled in his journal.

"So, well," said I, finally managing to pull myself together, "how are we going to get a pyro?" I answered my own question. "We will use the AIDA principle. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Any ideas? I have a website for our clan, and links to it!"

We set to work, and soon came up with a handy little advert.

Attention: Near naked night elf lady from world of warcraft is photoshopped onto Cecil. Caption is "Join The Magnificent Debatable Number Clan! Follow this link!"

It is notable that Cecil was oddly reluctant to finish that particular screenshot.

Interest: An entirely fabricated list of stats, magically gained from joining our clan.

Desire: Several entirely fabricated reviews of our fighting prowess from Valve, thanks to Rawfish kidnapping and torturing an admin.

Action: A cash incentive. Suffice to say that Bill Gates's bank account is less secure than it once was.

This scheme attracted precisely zero people, which left us roughly at square one. Which was, coincidentally, the amount of wins we had accumulated (the one being due to the entire other team surrendering out of sheer pity.)


	3. Chapter 3

In which, owing to popular demand (from an associate of mine) a new character is introduced.

This state of affairs lasted until, after several long minutes of getting my kills stolen by a sniper expertly blowing my brains out just before I managed to give the intended victim the last volley of shells from "Old Betsy" (I will stand by this excuse) I logged off from Team Fortress 2 and discovered, to my honest amazement, that someone appeared to have joined my clan. I called "the guys" together in amazement, and we naturally met up to await this new arrival.

"So, team," says I, as we all sat down on the now familiar 2fort spawn room benches to discuss tactics, "we now have a-"

There was the sound of the door being kicked in. I sighed.

"Rawfish, I told you to stop doing that. We're getting complaints from admin. Stop destroying things, please! This is a battlefield."

"Gnnh." The sound of pencil scribbling in journal. I sighed again, and turned to everyone else. "So, what do we know about this fellow?"

There was a shuffling of note paper. "Well," said Cluckenmeister, chewing his pen, "the player calls itself-"

"Itself?" I asked, a sensation of dread enveloping me.

Cluckenmeister nodded in an 'I'll be getting to that' sort of way. "It calls itself-" and then he made the kind of noise that a wind chime makes in, say, Haiti on a bad night. Doctor Octagonist and Cecil both reacted at once.

The good doctor reached for his bone saw. "Commies," he hissed.

"It translates into 'Extremely good celestial player of games'," Cecil said proudly. "From-"

"I'd know that bastard lingo anywhere! That's Korean craptalk, by god! Don't any of you guys remember the Korean War?" We all shook our heads. "Well, I do. You see, me and the boys had been sent into this place called Pusan, and-"

"As I was about to say," Cluckenmeister said patiently, "this gentleman is from Korea."

"Quiet commie!"

"From Korea?" I furrowed my brow. "Why's he over here then?"

"Well," Cluckenmeister said, consulting his notes, "he seems to have been attracted to our clan via an extremely advanced search engine, which found one matching his precise specifications."

"Oh? Well, it must have been attracted by our marvellous stats."

"Actually, no. It appears to have lingered initially on our picture of Cecil with that night elf lady, and then uncovered our real stats."

"Oh?" Suspicions were joining my first one. My face darkened. "Anything else?"

"Well, yes. It appears to be some sort of macro driven fellow who goes round seeking out, if I have read the script right, really beautiful women to grope and solicit, and I quote, 'cyber xxx' from, and then go into clinically inept clans and win every match just so as to gain enormous scores without the danger of anyone being good enough to steal kills."

There was a glum silence, punctuated by some kind of prolonged groan from Dreamygirl.

"Isn't that, like, the most totally OP thing in the game?" she ventured. "It's Korean, a bot, and a pyro with a BB! It will, like, totally pwn ass!"

This sunk in slowly.

"Bubba, you get the red carpet," says I. The little scout slouched off, muttering to himself.

As it turned out, however, we had no need for any such thing. Our pyro with the weird name was first sighted dashing past our spawning chamber, with all manner of gibberish sprouting out of the chat box. We waved, and called, and the pyro slowly turned round. I cleared my throat and stepped forward.

"Ahem. Welcome to our marvellous team fortress 2 clan. I am Capapias, the leader-"

"OMG," Dreamygirl muttered, "he's the leader?"

Cluckenmeister shrugged helplessly.

"-of this august organisation, dedicated to committing murder towards the opposing team on many different battlefields. This is Doctor Octagonist, a medic with an interesting speciality-"

"Damn straight!"

"-involving spraying the enemy with needles from a syringe rifle. The black gentleman is called Bubba, and he…well, scampers around and stings things with a handgun."

"Now, wait just one minu-"

"Thank you, Bubba. This is Cecil, our Heavy." I felt it prudent not to say more. That gentleman gave a shy sort of wave. The pyro's cold, dark lenses bored into me.

"This gentleman with the funky hat is called Hermann von Cluckenmeister, and he is our sniper. I would advise you not to get on his bad side!" This impression was sadly undermined by our faithful marksman asking if I wanted one cream cake or two.

"I now present Rawfish- Rawfish! Where the hell are you?" We all looked around.

There was the sound of a soft "Gnnh", a loud, prolonged scream, the dull rattle of minigun fire, and then silence.

"Well, he is- was- our spy. But now, it seems, in the grave. Wait eighteen seconds, and he'll be as right as rain." Eighteen seconds later, the sound of Gnnhing reassured us that this was the case. "And, of course, the great Dreamygirl." I took a breath to say the great long list of her apparent computer gaming conquests.

"Runner of the Deadmines in under five minutes with a Twink level ten gnome rogue; Defeater of Bioshock in under six hours; Grand Hoohah of Warcraft 3; Greatest Tank Rusher ever seen in the Soviet Union in Red Alert 2- hey, wait a minute, I thought that was me-dang it!; The Real Zezima… that'll make her sue, you do know that, don't you?"

I looked at the list, which appeared to make War and Peace look like a coffee table book, and crumpled it up in disgust.

"So… well, she's done a fair bit. Any questions?"

"U want xxx?" the chat box said.

I blinked. Fifteen years in England hadn't prepared me for this. "No."

"U want xxx?"

"No."

"U sure?"

"Yes, I'm quite sure."

"Me no spk Englandish."

"But you just did."

"No."

"Yes you did."

"No."

"Yes."

"No!!"

And so it went for about half an hour.

Eventually, Rawfish got impatient, and began to make most stringent demands based around his plans for gaming.

"I have found some viewers of pornography on the other team," he said. "I must go and kill them. Gnnh."

Cecil shuffled his feet uneasily.

"It's anime," our redoubtable spy added significantly.

Our Korean friend began to jump around in apparent excitement, and with that, the match began in earnest.

I managed to tolerate the Korean gentleman for about fifteen minutes, for it must be said that he managed a greater level of professionalism by our entire team put together. Three minutes in, all their spies logged off in unison as a form of passive resistance. Five minutes in none of them ever went into the sewers ever again, which allowed me to raise merry hell by randomly building sentries to enfilade their main exit. After nine minutes of play, Octagonist complained bitterly that the "bastard red" wasn't leaving him with any targets, which was perhaps just as well.

This friendship broke down with a great volley of SKYPE complaints to me.

Rawfish was the first. "The Korean killed my enemies! Gnnnh!" he said.

"What?"

"I was about to stick a soldier's rocket launcher up his anus, when the pyro burned him to the ground! He has no regard for etiquette."

"Wouldn't being burned alive be pretty painful?"

I could imagine the masked features changing. "He tickled me at school."

"Ah."

"I let people get away with the more innocent targets, but that's just beyond the pale."

Bubba was up next. "The punk burned my mfing ass, man!"

"I'm sorry?"

"He just did that sadouken shit, with the taunt, you know?"

"No."

"Well, he capped me down! Do something, brudda."

"I'm not your brother," I said wearily, but he was gone.

I sighed, turned to the skype, and found the bot right in front of me.

"Hello there," I said.

The gave a thumbs up.

"Now, I have received a number of complaints about your behaviour," said I. "As you know, I do not take such things lightly. However, all you have to do is say that you're sorry, and we'll get on fine. I've heard good things about your play, and-"

I stared for a moment. The bot was next to my dispenser. My dispenser! And was taking my steel.

"Would you step away for a minute, please?" I asked. The bot just stood there. I could see my hard earned metal reserve draining away. My sentry needed that!

"GET AWAY FROM MY GOD DAMNED DISPENSER!" I bawled. I levelled my shotgun. "We have a system of rules and etiquette in this game, and you suh are violating it. Nicking an engineer's steel is just…just wrong, sir, so get the hell away!"

The pyro started a demonic cackling, which was drowned out by my shotgun proving that friendly fire was still turned off.

Oh, and my agonised weeping.

We kept the Korean, much to the chagrin of all the other players. Our win ratio went through the roof as a result of his presence. I can admire him, but not like him.


End file.
